This course moves from the state-centric approach of State and Governance in India to a society-centric approach to survey the changes brought about in governance because of societal actors in traditional domains of the state. The crux of this course is the New Governance Agenda and its theoretical underpinnings. The society-centric approach challenges the traditionally conceived hierarchical models of government which depends on centralised command and control. It focuses instead on new modes of governance that blur the lines between public and private, state and market, and hard and soft law. This field examines the forces of globalisation and privatisation that create new types of social relations. These changes have prompted policy makers to introduce new reforms based on sociological concepts of rationality and network governance and this is called the New Governance Agenda in which the role of the state is seen as that of a facilitator rather than a provider.